In 1962, Andy Warhol abandoned his commercial illustration work and made Telephone, a straightforward black-and-white painting of an antiquated telephone. One of many hand-painted representations of quotidian objects the artist made during the early 1960s, it evolved out of his interest in elevating commercial imagery to fine-art status, and that positioned him at the forefront of the Pop art movement.

Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening...that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live life in one place at a time...you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.
—Andy Warhol